Public space is not gender neutral. This publication brings together articles written on the basis of materials from the 5th International Gender Workshop in Tbilisi in March 2016. It shows that the history of feminism is a history not only of fighting, but also one of winning.

The cases of Marwen and the six students from Kairouan who were arrested and sentenced for homosexual practices in 2015 received a lot of media coverage. However, that did not stop the spiral of violence against lesbians, gays, bisexuals and transgender people (LGBTs) in Tunisia. Homophobia can be deadly.

The research project highlights the national level parliaments and critically reviews quota designs, practices and experiences of women parliamentarians on both quota seats as well as general seats. A delegation of women parliamentarians, together with civil society activists from Afghanistan and Pakistan, went on a visit to Berlin and Brussels to discuss the first key findings.

The concept of "gender backlash" encompasses too activities pursued by a multitude of different local initiatives all over Central and Eastern Europe, which strongly promote tradition over equality. In many cases these groups appear to be backed and inspired both by influential US-American “pro life” organisations as well as the Kremlin’s "Gay-rope" propaganda, which aims to discredit the European Union as a place of moral decline.

This issue features two special dossiers: the democracy dossier analyzes the current situation and strategies of significant political actors towards the Presidential elections. The second one is a gender and macroeconomy dossier, which hopefully would provide an introduction to a gendered reading of macroeconomic issues in Turkey, who will be hosting the G20 summit in 2015.